Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Architecu* (for Architectu*)

“Architecture in general is frozen music.”

Friedrich von Schelling

The Taj Mahal is considered the finest example of Mughal architecture. The acoustics inside the tomb are such that a single note from a flute can reverberate five times, and the mausoleum’s white marble reflects different colours depending on the intensity of natural light from the sun or moon. It is a testament to love, having been built by the emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth in 1631.

A library can also be a place with interesting architecture. The Robarts Library (below) at the University of Toronto, for example, is infamous for its peacock-like design. Even stranger is the winner of the design competition for the new National Library of the Czech Republic, the yellow and purple blob pictured below.

When searching for errors in the catalogue, truncating the typo at architecu* will catch words missing the second T (architecure, architecural) as well as those that have swapped the T and U (architecutre).

Leanne Olson

(Taj Mahal photo from wayfaring.info; Robarts Library photo from library.utoronto.ca; National Library of the Czech Republic picture from treehugger.com)